


vigilantism is a life-path (it never likes when you quit)

by KilltheDJ



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (or he's trying to be okay), Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Dick Grayson-centric, Pre-Robin Jason Todd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26255458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Dick Grayson gets a phone call from a man he hasn't spoken to in eight months, about an identity he doesn't want and a brash young kid he doesn't want to meet.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 80





	vigilantism is a life-path (it never likes when you quit)

**Author's Note:**

> >:3 no specific canon is followed here, just some self-indulgent stuffz. dick is about twenty-one here, and became (training to be) robin when he was nine. also! first work in this fandom!

How do you become your own person when you’ve only been taught how to be someone else? It wasn’t an odd question, but for circumstance, it was rather pressing. 

Dick Grayson didn’t know who he was other than  _ Dick Grayson.  _ He didn’t even know if he was Dick Grayson-Wayne anymore, if he even  _ wanted  _ to be. He didn’t know if he was still Robin, if he was still a vigilante. 

Hell, he didn’t even fucking live in Gotham anymore. 

It’s not like it was hard for him to fathom growing up. It had always been a pressing weight on his shoulders with more and more of the world gnawing at the arms holding his fragile identity up, breaking him down as time snarled in his face. 

Bludhaven wasn’t Gotham. There was no Batman.

There was his empty apartment, with boxes of belongings and furniture that had been sitting there for months, and the Robin suit sitting in the back of his closet. 

He didn’t want to be Robin; he didn’t want to be Batman, sure, but  _ Robin?  _ That was who he was. 

That was who he’d been for years, who he always would be, who he had lived as for years, with Dick Grayson lurking in the shadows like a ghost. Like he was  _ Bruce fucking Wayne  _ or something, living behind his real life instead of the mask. 

And yet, there he was. Living as Dick Grayson, with a flickering kitchen light and air conditioning that isn’t working too right, unaware of what he was supposed to be doing as a normal human person at two in the morning. 

Usually, if he was fifteen and didn’t have a math test in the morning, he would be prowling the streets of Gotham trying to find a way to prove himself to the big bad Batman, a grown-ass man in a bat suit who beat up mentally ill people in his free time. 

Well, that was an over-exaggeration, considering those particular mentally ill persons were usually trying to murder other people, or maybe they were drug lords trying to traffick drugs  _ and  _ children, and - he’s getting off track. Jeez, Batman villains really put a bad name to anyone with a mental illness. That was frustrating. 

Right, yeah, he hadn’t idolized Batman in years. Sometimes he forgets that he’s nineteen, not fifteen, and he didn’t even go to school anymore. College was still a maybe, and it wasn’t like he had a job. 

New city, but not a new start. He was still leeching off of Wayne Enterprises, not as though it did them any harm, and he was just some  _ guy.  _

At the very least, because he wasn’t living in the Manor and hadn’t exactly told anyone he was leaving, beyond Alfred, he wasn’t going to be hounded by the press or paparazzi asking him why he left, whether he just grew up or if it was  _ something more.  _

God, those people could dig into his head more than anyone else. 

So, regardless he was sitting at the table lost in the kind of thoughts that never leave when his phone rang, a steady rhythm of  _ Poker Face  _ playing. 

Of course it was Bruce. Why couldn’t the man just learn to text, like everyone else? 

Dick sighed, debating declining the call, or simply ignoring it, but he ended up picking the smartphone up with heavy hands. 

“Yes, Bruce? It’s me.” He wanted to tack on  _ what do you want,  _ but he figured it was already implied. 

Bruce hadn’t spoken to him since he’d moved out in semi-secret. Neither had Alfred, though Alfred had made sure that Dick knew he was still cared for, in the familial sense rather than the financial sense. 

Bruce sighed as well, and Dick bitterly thought about all the habits he’d picked up from the man in the eleven years they’d lived together. What a bitch, time was. “I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and I know that… I know-” 

“You don’t know shit.” Maybe Dick was  _ tired  _ of always being interrogated with micro-expressions and metaphors. Maybe he was  _ tired  _ of being treated like a child who needed comforting and coddling and needed everything either explained to him or handed to him on a silver plate. 

Unfortunately, Bruce didn’t seem to get the memo. Dick decided that instead of focusing on what Bruce was saying, he would get some orange juice, leaving the phone on the counter with speaker-phone on. “I know that you don’t want to be Robin anymore.” 

Ah, so it wasn’t a  _ Bruce Wayne  _ type of call. It was a  _ Batman  _ type of call. That made sense, considering, Bruce was incapable of doing anything that didn’t have an ulterior motive to it. The orange juice was even more appealing than before, Dick found, taking a sip instead of answering. 

“I don’t want to be  _ your  _ Robin anymore.” That wasn’t true. He didn’t want the name at all. It was from a different age, a different type of Dick Grayson, a boy who honored his parents by punching people carrying different types of weaponry. 

And to think all the other kids did baseball. 

“That’s - you know what I mean. I know what  _ you  _ mean.” But Bruce didn’t, not really. Dick sort-of missed the tinny sound that used to come out of phones, before he replaced his old one. 

Goddamn Wayne Enterprises. There was no escape. Not for him, not for Gotham, not for  _ anyone.  _

Everyone would always, in some way, belong to the Batman, and Dick didn’t like to think about all the lives they’d changed, for better or for worse. And he was guilty, too, an accomplice in his own right with a wry grin and a fluttering cape. 

Way to get dark. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one with a sense of humor? That’s what everyone always told him; Bruce must’ve done something right to get a son like you, they would say, with people-pleasing smiles plastered across their faces. 

There were no more Wayne Galas for him. Just… just Dick Grayson. Not Robin. 

Still, the question lingered. How was he supposed to be Dick Grayson if all he’d known was Robin? 

What the  _ fuck  _ was that supposed to mean? He wasn’t Bruce, goddammit!

There was more exhaustion in Dick’s tone than he was willing to admit, wiping his face down, like he’d been sweating or something. “Sorry. Repeat that for me?” 

“I know that you’ve… grown out of being Robin, that you don’t want it anymore.” It wasn’t like you could just  _ wash away  _ eleven years of becoming a vigilante, of  _ becoming  _ the dynamic duo. 

The public would wonder where he went. They would wonder whether Robin finally died, or if he just quit, or a thousand other things that would no doubt cause catastrophic damage to Gotham. And yet, none of it was his problem. 

Because that was just his paranoia talking.

Fuck. He’s supposed to be listening to Bruce, right. He always forgot that part, though he didn’t know whether it was because Bruce’s voice droned on or because he was always distracted. 

So, he tuned back in, pretending he’d been listening the whole time and only somewhat remembering that Bruce couldn’t see him. “Being Robin meant a lot to you, I know that. It’s your family’s colors. It’s your name. And I know that… that Batman needs a Robin.” 

Batman would  _ always  _ need a Robin, in the same way that Gotham would always need a Batman. They kept each other together, the world’s best detective and the boy wonder, side by side in the streets of Gotham. Or so the public saw it. 

Dick had to admit that he liked thinking about it like that, but he wasn’t going to go all old-crone glory days at twenty-one. 

“Batman needs a Robin, what are you gonna do about that? I told you. I’m done.” Dick had never told him anything, actually. He’d just  _ left.  _ There was an argument, and he left, and none of it mattered anymore because it was over with. 

Except it didn’t work like that. It never worked like that. 

“I know you’re done. I’m not suggesting you come back.” 

_ Oh.  _ Bruce didn’t want him to come back. Bruce didn’t need a Robin that was all grown-up, didn’t need one that didn’t need his help. 

Bruce wanted to replace him. 

He would be lying if he said that he didn’t grip his phone, that his jaw didn’t clench in a way that made the orange juice aftertaste sour in his mouth. “Who did you find, Bruce? Who the  _ fuck  _ did you find?” 

He wasn’t replaceable, goddammit! There wasn’t a line of goddamn Robin-wannabes that could be him! 

He’d been gone for  _ eight months.  _ Eight months he hadn’t spoken to Bruce Wayne, or go out as Robin, or get a job, or properly move in, or fucking anything. 

And in eight months, Brucie  _ fucking  _ Wayne found someone to replace him. 

Maybe there was hesitation in Bruce’s tone when he spoke again, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. There was no use for emotion when the  _ mission  _ always came first. It came before Bruce Wayne, it came before Dick, it came before anything  _ human  _ that could drive him. 

“There… I think you should meet him. He’s a spitfire of a kid, a lot like you were when you were -” 

“Don’t say it.  _ Don’t say it.”  _

“Dick, I -” 

“Don’t say anything!” Dick’s knuckles were white, clutching the kitchen table like he could break it with his bare hands. He could if he wanted to. 

He didn’t give one flying fuck about what he could do. It wasn’t about him. It was about Bruce. It was always about Bruce. “Don’t you fucking say anything, you can’t - you can’t  _ replace  _ me and ask me to meet him!”

“I’m not asking you to do that!” Bruce shouted, finally shouted, his voice carrying over with what Dick could already see as a glare. What an expressive fucking man. “I’m - listen to me for one second, I can hear you walking away!”

With his phone set on the table, still on speaker, the glass of orange juice sitting untouched on the table with a single sip taken, Dick paused in the doorway. There was no way for Bruce to know that he’d done that. 

So, he figured Bruce was grasping at straws when he spoke again, just  _ hoping  _ that Dick was listening. “I’m not asking you to come and be his best friend. I’m not asking  _ him _ whether he wants to be Robin or not. I’m asking  _ you  _ whether it’s okay for that to be an  _ option.  _ It’s your name, and your family colors, and it’s your decision, Dick. I won’t take that from you.” 

That was… not what Dick was expecting. 

He didn’t say a word, slowly inching back to his phone as though Bruce was suddenly going to take it back, say that he didn’t mean it, there was a new Robin and Dick was being replaced. 

Bruce continued. “I want you to meet him. I want you to meet the boy that could, potentially, have your permission to be Robin. He’s… he’s a lot like you and I were, when we were young.” 

“When we were  _ mourning.”  _ There was no pretty way to explain it; the rage and the anger that broke cement walls with a single punch and three-months worth of bandages and casts. 

The way that sometimes, funerals were too much, and your rose was a day late and a dollar short. Orphans are used to that kind of thing, or as used to it as you ever get when it’s your  _ parents  _ and you only have to do it once. 

“He’s not mourning, Dick.” 

Dick hadn’t even realized Bruce could hear him; it was more quiet than anything, a thought to himself and not something to share. 

He was in his head nowadays more often than he, or his gym buddy, were willing to admit, after that last debacle where he fell asleep on the weight machine having worked-out so long. 

Still, Bruce continued. “He’s not mourning, not like we were. He’s a street kid. The kind of kid that lost his parents long before they were dead, and no one else was going to take him in. I needed to. He needed a home.” 

Well, he could say something snippy about  _ that’s what orphanages and foster homes are for,  _ but Gotham’s street kids were notorious for their hatred of the foster system, and Dick had his own habit of collecting strays. 

Those strays just happened to be self-sufficient and didn’t need to take anyone else’s name. They were also called many different team names. 

“I needed a home, too, Bruce,” Dick mumbled. It’s not true. He’d needed a family more than anything, like any nine-year-old with freshly-buried parents needed. He didn’t  _ need  _ a domino mask and training. 

But he  _ did,  _ and he… he couldn’t think about that.

“It’s… it’s not like that. You’d see, if you actually met him. His name is Jason.” 

Jason, huh? Dick might just need to meet that kid. If only because Bruce was asking permission for Robin to be passed on, and it had been eight months since they last spoke, and Dick might actually kill someone if  _ Jason  _ was staying in his room at the Manor. 

It was a mansion. He could find his own room. 

Regardless, Dick pinched the bridge of his nose, resisting the urge to sigh once again. He did that way too frequently, especially when he was talking to Bruce. “Jason, huh? You adopted him yet?” 

“No. We’re still… acclimating to each other.” 

While Dick wanted to throw accusations of  _ it’s been eight months, how have you not ‘acclimated’ to each other,  _ he knew that Bruce was, most likely, trying. Dick had been the same way when he first got to the Manor; he didn’t want to be there so he would run away.

Only sometimes would he come back on his own accord; most of the time it was because he was arrested or because he got caught. You know, the usual. 

“Y’know what? Y’know what, maybe I’ll go. And I’ll give you the suit back. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want  _ anything  _ to do with Robin, or Batman, or - or whoever.” 

“... I understand. Should we expect you tomorrow?” 

“Yeah. Four o’clock.” 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> tell me ur thoughts ? >:3 join me over on @lacklusterdc via tunglr dot hell if you're so inclined


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